The invention relates to a safety mechanism for preventing unauthorized use of a firearm.
The inheritance privilege in the weapon law states that the heirs of a testator, who was authorized to carry a weapon, may legally take ownership of the weapon regardless of whether the heirs are authorized or not to carry a weapon. If one takes note that alone in Germany there are approximately 10 million weapons in private ownership, then this means that a significant risk exists regarding the abuse of such weapons.
To secure a firearm against unauthorized use, it is known to block the barrel by means of a lock, such as a key lock (compare EP 0 959 319 A2). However, this type of lock is not sufficient. Such a lock can be cracked.
A safety mechanism for a firearm is known from the U.S. Pat. No. 3,193,959 which contains an expandable sleeve insertable into the cartridge chamber of the firearm. This expandable sleeve can be pressed against the inside wall of the cartridge chamber by two clamping cones, which can be moved against one another in order to prevent a loading operation. In order to remove such a safety mechanism, however, a pin formed on the locking side of the clamping cone must merely by moved back by a cleaning rod or the like introduced from the front into the barrel, whereby the expandable sleeve is relaxed. This safety mechanism can thus be simply removed even without a special tool.
It would probably be possible to destroy parts of a weapon which are important for the operation of a weapon in order to make such a weapon non-usable. This, however, is not possible when one is dealing with a valuable weapon because one would lose significant value due to the destruction.
The purpose of this invention is to provide a safety mechanism, which can be released by a man skilled in the art, whereby, however, the attempt to make an unauthorized release results in damage to the weapon. More specifically, and in order to secure firearms against unauthorized use, an insert is inserted into a portion of the barrel, which insert has an expandable sleeve. A first expanding device is releasably inserted into one end of the expandable sleeve to thus press lockingly against the inside wall of the barrel. A second expanding device is inserted into the other end of the expandable sleeve. When an axial pressure is applied to the second expanding device, the expandable sleeve engages the inside wall of the barrel. The one end of the expandable sleeve is covered with a protective plate which can only be destroyed by spark erosion to remove the expandable sleeve from the barrel without damaging the firearm.
The safety mechanism has two functions, whereby the one function can be compared with a straddling dowel and the other function with a blind rivet.